Leave it Burn
by truhekili
Summary: Just how haunted is Seattle-Grace, anyway? Alex and Izzie find out. Story begins during the Season 6 Finale. Standard Disclaimer: I do not own these characters or make a financial profit from this story. Two Chapters. Complete. Shipper: Alex/Izzie
1. Chapter 1

The dull hum of the descending elevator suddenly grew louder as an alien sweep of pink taffeta rustled around her, and blood pooled at her shoes. She let out a harrowing scream, grabbing frantically for the rail as the walls rattled, and squeezing her eyes shut as she braced for impact.

Jolted, Izzie forced her eyes open, blinking into the fluorescent glare as voices murmured and strong hands gripped her arms, and baffled colleagues assured her that they'd come to a stop. They were staring, and she realized then that she was still wearing the standard uniform of the office's medical assistants, and that she'd arrived at her floor.

* * *

Alex crawled through a trail of sticky red and tumbled down an icy shaft and slammed onto a hard surface. Sharp metal seared his lungs and hands swarmed over him and muffled voices echoed in his ears and he was pinned which meant the ref had already started the count and he heard numbers chanted in the distance and he had to break free.

* * *

Izzie insisted that she was fine, shooed them away, joked awkwardly about her odd elevator phobias, and returned to her work, the filing and charting she did at a large private medical practice because it paid decently and kept her busy, while she waited for the Call, any call, from any surgical program willing to give her another shot.

It would always be all routine tests and flu shots and paper work, until she got the Call, because she had too many red flags in her file, and no one trusted her to do more, and no one expected her to stay even if her health held up, and no one would believe a pretty blonde like her could be a surgeon until she showed them, which she would.

* * *

He had to get up or someone else would win the trophy and someone else would be stronger and his mother would still be bleeding, and he had to get up but more metal pierced him and more hands clawed at him and they were throwing him back down the icy elevator shaft and he had to get up before the darkness devoured him again.

* * *

Fifty eight seconds of bewildering news footage crawled across the flickering television screen in the suddenly over-crowded waiting room before Izzie realized that the hospital under siege was Seattle Grace.

Four minutes elapsed before her trembling fingers would dial one correct number. Hours straggled by before the first jittery reply came. But she already knew, had already known for hours, or would have, if only she'd put all the pieces together sooner.

She was packed and gone in under two hours.

* * *

Hands swarmed around him in steady intervals over the next week, always pulling him back into the elevator just before he could reach her.

Her eyes gazed vacantly and blood pooled around her. But she would have screamed if she could have - or maybe she had, and he was just too far away to hear it.

But he was trapped, like a bug in a pool of sticky red, and then he couldn't move, and then he was crawling but not fast enough, and then they were throwing him down into the darkness again, and the empty-eyed gaze staring back at him still hadn't screamed.

* * *

Izzie sat beside him for six days, listening to the vent's steady rhythm, and glaring back at the puzzled expressions as Meredith and Cristina and Bailey and Lexi filtered in and out of his room at all hours, offering stilted greetings and up-dates on the others, and then food and nervous questions about how she was, and eventually places to stay for a day or a week, though they all knew better then to ask how long she'd be there this time.

It was the musty air in the hospital, she imagined, that was still standing everyone's hair on end, as nurses traveled in pairs and orderlies avoided supply closets and janitors furiously scrubbed any suspicious spots and doctors feigned detachment and went about their business and spirits and shadows ruled over them all, immune to reason and logic.

Some of them even acted surprised, as if they didn't know the hospital was haunted; she could have told them that years ago.

* * *

The burning haze lifts in fits and starts, always punctuated by another flurry of tubes and beeps and the fire still rages in his chest and he's sure he's suffocating. But there's a cool hand in his and the voice sounds too familiar and he must be hallucinating but the shaky blur around the edges always settles, finally, into a ring of blonde curls that holds steady.

* * *

She watches them taper down on his meds over the next week and she wonders what he'll remember. More harrowing tales come and go with the steady stream of visitors and Meredith looks glassy eyed and pale and Cristina would seem hyper professional - except for her jittery voice and darting eyes – and they all inhale sharply when Bailey calls him Alex and whispers something to him while gently clasping his fingers.

Lexi twists herself into an entire case of pretzels until she finally spills everything and then she just keeps saying that he did nothing but apologize to her once he'd called her Iz

Hearing her name like that out loud again makes her queasy and drains the feeling from her limbs. But she wonders if that's just what happens to people when they lose so much blood volume: they forget why they're fighting with you, or maybe, they just forget that fighting was the only thing you had left.

You can't forget that, though, and you can't forget what you're fighting for now, which has nothing to do with him, and you can't forget all the other premonitions you've had before – and you can't forget how much this reminds you of your mother and her loony friends, with their readings and their Tarot cards – and that's his fault, too, and you'll add it to his tally of crimes the moment he wakes.

* * *

They're still pushing and pulling and poking and prodding him and a simmering feral rage bubbles beneath his skin as his blood levels creep back but they can't quite reach the boiling point and he can't muster the fight to push the pokers and prodders away and he can't let the ring of the blonde curls with the cool hand see any of it anyway, or she might not come back again.

It never stops, the fire in his chest, and he can't complain or she'll see he's a coward and he can't wince or she'll see he's a wimp and he can't tell her he still see those vacant eyes staring back at him amid a puddle of blood or she'll think he's a junkie and he can't say the eyes never go away even when he sleeps or she'll think he's like his crazy mother.

* * *

Bailey offers her a temporary job in the clinic, since staffing is in chaos with the merger and the mass shootings and the freaked resignations, and she wants to laugh and snort no thank you. But money trumps pride and it's not like her old boss wasn't expecting her to flake out and bail, anyway, since apparently that's one of her red flags.

She shuttles between her new patients and Alex's room and it's like moving from crime scene to crime scene – a security guard dead there, a cardiac nurse mowed down there – and people still inch across the catwalk as if they're waiting for cannon fire and skirt conference rooms and supply closets as if they're land mined– and make-shift memorials spring up around the hospital, while dead ghosts circulate placidly among the living ones.

It's vaguely offensive, and she has to stop herself from shaking April Keppner because she got a second chance, unlike Reed or Charles, and idiotic shrines won't bring anyone back, and she can tell her from bitter experience that grief destroys everything it touches and she just wants to scream at her that once you've fought for your life you should demand more from yourself then piling red balloons and stuffed frogs in the hallway and writing insipid messages on a pink cardboard placard - even if frogs were Reed's favorite animal and Charles was secretly in love with her – as if any of that mattered now.

* * *

His face reddens as Teddy Altman pokes and prods the gaping wound and his entire side is a sickening kaleidoscope of blue and black and purple serrated by an angry red chasm and his breath is ragged and forced just from sitting up and fire still rages in his chest and he still has to swallow down the over whelming impulse to shove her hands away.

He catches Izzie watching and shifts awkwardly, shielding what he can from her view because she'll think this makes him a victim – which he isn't – and she'll think it hurts like hell, which is does but she can't know that, and she'll think he's even more damaged goods now because bald grows back but scars like this never fade and she'll probably think he deserved the hole that got blown right through him, anyway.

* * *

There's a small window off to her right and the sky's a curious blue grey instead of the usual grey blue but she refuses to look away as Altman continues her exam because she knows he wants her to - and he posted her modeling pictures once - but he told her she was beautiful even when she was bald and he kissed her even when clumps of her hair clung to his tuxedo and he didn't run even when they spent their wedding night in the ICU, and he straightened her wig with the same shy smile he wore when he said 'I do'.

That was all an eternity ago, though, before she died in his arms, before the merger and the misread lab results, before unanswered phone calls and piles of medical bills and divorce papers, before she'd come and gone too many times, before fighting for her life became fighting just to fight - until she had nothing left to fight for, and nothing left to fight with – before she became an anonymous medical assistant with brittle hair and fading hopes and a simmering resentment toward anyone who labeled her a survivor – as if that wasn't just another red flag.

* * *

He listened idly as Altman reviewed post-op instructions, his face reddening again as he imagined navigating stairs and cars and Mere's house when he could barely move and barely eat and still saw those eyes in his sleep and still woke abruptly to her face, fine porcelain white in a sea of red, and she still hadn't screamed.

He shifted uncomfortably again and he almost heaved as she taped him back up and he cursed his trembling limbs as he pulled the blanket tightly around him and just leaning back in his bed made him dizzy and he could feel her eyes on him, so intently that he refused to open his own again until the room went quite, except for the monitors.

* * *

Izzie returned to the clinic with a queasy feeling because she was sure he'd be pestering Altman to let him out already but he seemed jittery and nervous and his face darkened over when she set a firm release date and he wasn't fighting with the nurses' aides or the physical therapists – who should all hate him by now – and it was all wrong.

She winced as she walked past another of April's memorials – this one covered with names, some she recognized - and she almost wondered if his should be added, like some kind of a John Doe, because they'd found his body in that elevator, and had it upstairs, but the rest of him was still missing, and she wondered how much of it had seeped into flooring that had already been replaced, and how much of it was recoverable.

* * *

He nearly hurls in the elevator and he gasps in the car despite his best efforts and nearly passes out on his way up the stairs and his head is still spinning as Izzie settles him into his bed and it's hours before he remembers that Mere hadn't been the one to bring him home and Izzie was apparently staying in his room since Lexi still hadn't moved out.

Izzie wears seven layers to bed and stays pretty still as far as he can tell, which isn't very far at all, and he's groggy and disoriented the morning after and too shaky to fight when she joins him in the shower.

But he remembers enough to hide the scar as best he can – since his whole right side looks like a freaking hippie tie-dye shirt sewn together by two blind drunks - and he slumps dripping on the bathroom floor where he can tape it back up himself afterwards rather then let her touch it, and he counts it as some kind of victory that he makes it all the way back to his bed before he drifts off again.

* * *

She works part-time that week, and is home by three each afternoon, though mostly he's asleep and mostly Mere's still home with Derek, anyway. It's awkward and stilted and the temptation to power bake grows and Lexi is more frantic then usual as she moves out and in, and out and in, and then out again in the span of a week, alternately wearing the ring she hides nervously and fleeing like a startled rabbit at the first hint of conversation.

There's a lot of that going around, and Meredith tip toes around Derek, and Cristina's in the den hiding from Hunt, and Lexi holes up in the attic when her ring's off and Mark's around, and Izzie ends up making large meals and trying new deserts – even though Alex can't really eat and Derek's surly and Mere's distracted and Cristina just picks listlessly at the Marshmallow CoCo Puffs and Lexi finally moves out for good – maybe.

* * *

Izzie carts him to his post-op appointments and the mandatory shrink meeting and she tells them that he still needs pain meds and he's still not sleeping well – as if he's not right there in front of them, in the freaking flesh – and he rolls his eyes at Altman as she writes more prescriptions and he gasps again as he tries to dress himself and he snarls at Wyatt when she asks him what he saw, again, as if any of it is past tense, and he can feel Izzie's disapproving stare as he bypasses the elevators and struggles down the stairs.

He listens to her breathing beside him later that night and he tries not to watch how she moves while she sleeps and he tries not to notice how the blonde curls spill over her pillow and he forces his fingers not to brush hers and he wonders why she's still in his bed now that Lexi seems to be gone – not that that situation doesn't change hourly – and he finally focuses on the clock atop his nightstand, watching the minutes crawl past.

It works for eleven minutes, before he's almost dozing again, but he fights to stay awake anyway, away from the vacant-eyed stare that still never screams. He shifts further from Izzie just in case, though, as far as he can, because she's noticed his dreams, and she'll keep telling Wyatt, and the shrink will never clear him to return to work if he's seeing things, and sometimes he half thinks that Izzie being in his bed is another hallucination, anyway - and mostly it's easier to think that she's a hallucination if he stays far enough away so that he can't touch her, and mostly it's easier to think that, anyway, since hallucinations can't leave for real.

* * *

She watches him with Mere in the kitchen the following week - notices Mere whisper something to him as he rinses out a drinking glass, and run her fingers lightly across his back as she reaches for a dish towel - and Izzie half expects him to shove her away. But her movements just merit a weak smirk, and she knows that Mere's encouraging him to stick it out with Wyatt, and she wonders when, exactly, Mere became his first choice.

It was all different until it wasn't, and Alex went back upstairs to bed, and Cristina came by toting Tequila and grumbling about Owen and their new apartment, and Mere rolled her eyes about Derek's renewed house plan obsession, and other secrets bubbled between them, too, and she wasn't a part of any of that, either, because she hadn't been there that day, and they were still Meredith and Cristina, but now she was just someone they used to work with. She should have known that, though; she told them that herself.

Padding up the steps, she passes her old bedroom, or Lexi's old room, now empty again, and pauses in the open doorway, and runs her finger over the rough wall paper and the worn wood work, and it all looks just like she'd left it, like she'd never lived there at all, and she wonders sometimes if she's disappearing everywhere, if she's just fading into the shadows, where ghosts and premonitions are more real then flesh and blood.

Closing the door behind her, she walks quietly down the hall, slipping into his bed and studying his face. She wonders if he's disappearing, too, because he's not fighting her and he's not fighting back against Altman and Wyatt, and he still moves too slow and breathes too shallow, and he just looks puzzled and much too startled when she slowly peels off his clothes, and if he wasn't Alex she'd swear it was mild panic that flooded his eyes as she traced her hand teasingly along his thigh, following the curve of his hip.

This had always been the easy part for them, once, but she stalls, suddenly hesitant, as he nervously averts his eyes, tracking her movements as she traces delicately across his torso. She sees him cringe despite her slow stroking, and she needs a new map of his body, because the bandages and bruising stand out starkly against his pale skin, and the blue purple swath that sprawls over his side makes him stiff, and she's almost afraid to touch him at first, since she can't readily find familiar places to rest her hands while she re-routes, and she realizes then why he locks the bathroom door now when he showers.

She's sure his eyes follow hers, and she catches one wary look. But then she brushes over the first land mark she remembers well, and catches his deep sigh, and then she wanders west over two long moans, and the territory all grows familiar, and she takes a slight eastern detour across a few intense gasps, and an entire hemisphere trembles as she sets a more leisurely pace for that leg of the world tour, and she recalls all the side roads as the terrain trembles beneath her, and the geography is all so well mapped by then that she can find her way even in pitch darkness, and a long, shuddering groan tells her she's home.

* * *

Her fingers are sticky like blood – though he's sure it's just cake frosting – the first night that she peels off his faded blue tee shirt to a familiar sound track of beastly rumblings, and her old room is still empty but Izzie's still staying in his bed, and he's groggy when she wakes him but he's seen this act before and he knows it's feeding time at the zoo even before her clothes join the rest of his on the night stand, and he expects to wake to nightmares these days, but not to dreams.

Her skin slides across his and he tries not to gasp and he's sure that she'll stop when she hesitates, when the crater in his chest repels her and she sees how little the ugly bruising has faded. But her beast must be starving, since she just shifts around awkwardly and her hands sink lower and part of him almost tries to pull away, but not any part of him under her fingers, and another moan escapes him before he can move.

Moving just draws her closer, anyway, and he's sure she knows his blood counts are still low, and this still may not be happening outside of his head, except that she's as loud as he remembers, and her lips are as soft, and her fingers are as strong, and she still smells like green apple shampoo and cake frosting and she just curves in all the right places, and then her skin is rippling against his again and all of his senses are rioting and his lungs are rebelling and everything is quivering and fevered heat bubbles through his veins.

He winces when she pauses and curls carefully around him, and moans as her fingers are teasing while she giggles into his ear, and he curses his trembling limbs as giggling turns to nibbling and he's sure the beast will slink away hungry. But then his eyes roll back in his head and he hears a rumbling growl he's pretty sure comes from him and a different kind of fire erupts below his scar line and he imagines she'd drown out a whole jungle of horny hyenas by the time she's coiling lazily around him again.

His breath returns slowly and her silky skin wraps around him and her warm curves pour into his body, and he's still dazed and lightheaded as her lips nuzzle his neck, and his arms close automatically around her as she settles into him with a contented murmur, as if she expects to stay there, and he wonders vaguely as she drifts off in his arms if she'll vanish again before morning, and if he's about to wake to a different kind of nightmare.

* * *

She pokes him gently the next morning, kisses him softly, grabs his hand and tugs him to the shower. She imagines that he's uncertain and awkward because he's still groggy, and that he's trembling slightly afterward because the towels are too thin and the room is too cool, and because he has appointments with Altman and Wyatt early that afternoon.

She drops him back home sometime after five, and swings by the store to pick up more cup cake frosting. She buys four thick yellow bath towels, too, and lettuce, and milk, and runs methodically down her list, hesitating briefly before tossing yet another case of Tuna Delight cat treats into her cart, before moving on to sugar and tea bags. The clerk even prints out coupons for her, now, for squeaky cat toys and organic kitty litter.

It just makes her roll her eyes again the following week, as she puts another batch of cup cakes in the oven, and then peeks out at him from the window – where he's perched on the porch swing again with the nosy neighbor cat who adopted him – sneaking the orange and white striped tabby silly fish shaped treats despite his repeated insistence that it's just a freaking Creamsicle with claws.

She wonders what he's hiding from this time, and she brings him out one of her cup cakes and watches him abruptly shoo the cat away and she asks him point blank if it's her, or surly Derek, or jittery Mere – though she can't imagine him hiding anything from her – or the hospital, or the nightmares he won't tell her about, or the phone messages from his brother, or the cards from Amber – and she reminds him that he'd promised her a trip, once, too, before she knew about Aaron, or the little sister who sent him get well notes in bright purple envelopes.

He just shrugs and gnaws quietly on his cup cake, though, and the night grows darker and cooler, and she waits until he's out-right shivering before she drags him inside, and she reminds him through gritted teeth that he hasn't heard the last of this.

She leaves for work early the next morning, earlier then necessary, and she breathes a sigh of relief as familiar faces arrive and the clinic springs to life. She'd tried to be almost invisible when Bailey first asked her back, tried not being the cancer chick, the one who screwed ghosts, the one who stole organs, the one who got fired, and ran away.

She tried not to be any of those things, but the cold stares still came, the raised eyebrows and quick glances and whispers, the tip toeing around her as if she were a bomb waiting to detonate and she wondered, sometimes, what she was even battling them for.

But the clinic needed her, and she could still be an actual doctor there, and it wasn't all about cutting and competing, and some people actually left happy, and flu shots did save lives, and she loved it when children learned not to fear hospitals so much, and it seemed less like settling when relieved patients who could never afford to see a doctor without her actually thanked her, and told her how much they appreciated how much she cared.

* * *

He tells her he'll just wait for her to finish her shift on the day of his next round of appointments, and that he'll just hang around the hospital, even though he's still weeks from returning to work. He has to, because the house is one prison and his body is still another and their eyes are a third, and he needs to be somewhere else, anywhere else.

It's all still there, though – the acrid antiseptics and the hums and beeps of the monitors and the hisses of the vents and the blare of the sirens in the ambulance bay – followed by the low whispers and the curious stares and the questions, and the stark reminders that leave him sweating on a bench outside near the side entrance.

He waits for her to finish again a week later, this time in the clinic since he has to get used to it, and he watches a little girl giggle at her, gap toothed and freckled, as she holds out her arm for stitches, and it's all there all over again – all of her – and it's her laugh, and her smile, and the way the kid takes her hand after she finishes, and her voice, and the way people light up around her – like when she was the bright yellow for the crazy cardiac chick – and his stomach sinks because he knows she's biding her time again.

He wonders if its anger or guilt or just a perverse desire to punish him for not signing the divorce papers fast enough, for not mailing them back to her until the day before … the day before… that's keeping her here. It's either that, or him being a freaking invalid, he imagines, and he shoves himself out of his chair and he struggles to walk faster because then she can run again, away from every reminder, away from him.

He walks as fast as he can. But then it's her hands and her lips and her skin again and she pulls him up the stairs and she peels off his clothes and the scars still don't deter her and the beast must still be hungry and her body still coils gently around him as she drifts off in his arms, and he wonders how much worse it will be the next time he finds a note in his locker, the next time dream turns to nightmare.

* * *

She watches him pull back over the next few days and she's sure he should be fighting for space by now and she crowds him to try to provoke him and she's nagging him about appointments again and taunting him about driving and elevators and squawking about him not being back at work yet though she's sure it's still too soon.

She listens as Altman clears him to drive and says he can return to part time scut in two weeks, and she almost tosses in two more cents later that night, but then he announces abruptly that he's going to Iowa for a few days. Izzie insists that she's going, too, and he finally fights back some - for the first time that she can remember since she'd been back - but she still does most of the driving while he grumbles about not needing a baby sitter.

* * *

It's just as well that she's mad since now she'll shut up about the trip he'd promised and he's sure she's already had her fill of corn stalks and silo sightings and it's not like Iowa was a vacation destination and she could crow all she wanted but everybody here drives around grain threshers and if she didn't really want to know what that smell was then she shouldn't have freaking asked and there are no vegetarians in the Farm Belt, anyway.

That's all forgotten, though, when their car pulls slowly up the dusty dirt road, and a familiar feeling washes over him – hazy and suffocating. He shouldn't be here, and she sure shouldn't have come with him.

But Amber had sent him six cards after he'd been shot, and it was maybe the one thing in a million that he hadn't screwed up beyond repair, yet, and Izzie was long gone already, even if she was sitting right there beside him, but Amber signed her cards with a glitter pen and Snoopy stickers and she didn't sound like she hated him.

* * *

Izzie watches the blood drain from his face as she rolls the car to a stop, and she follows him past the cow mailbox and up the creaky wooden steps, and he knocks on the heavy black door, and he promises his mother that he's fine – which he's not - before they're even in the small living room, and he tells his sister he's already back at work -which he isn't – though Amber's already excitedly asked him twice if he's really a doctor now, and if he's ever delivered a real baby by himself - and it's lie after lie settling over the worn floral furnishings and the faded green carpet, like the ever present prairie dust that swirls through the fading afternoon sun pouring in through the lace curtains.

He introduces her as Izzie, just Izzie, Izzie from Washington state, Izzie a great doctor who runs a clinic, and bakes the world's best cup cakes, and likes her iced tea with two sugars; just Izzie, who works at the same hospital with him, and wanted to see Iowa – and if it weren't for that last part, it would sound almost like she was his prom date.

She almost interrupts, almost puts a stop to the whole charade, until she realizes that his mother's not all there, and his sister's itching to leave Iowa by any means necessary, and his brother's a long haul truck driver whose out on the road somewhere near Nebraska, and his father's long gone, and home to him is the center of five spokes that barely touch, all pointing loosely to a cramped house not much sturdier than a double wide.

She listens over the next few days, as he explains the impossible to his sister, and humors his mother while checking her meds, and awkwardly semi-parents both of them, who seem oddly dependent on him, and he's always halting and uncertain.

She has no idea who he is here, either, any more then he seems to– since it's not really lying when you're trying to calm a tenuously controlled schizophrenic, and you can't tell the entire truth to an impressionable teenager clinging to whatever hope she has left, and it's all just some desperate web he's trying to patch together as he goes – and she knows the whole thing breaks if he does.

She watches Amber closely, and she has long curly hair and bright hazel eyes and she's too pretty and smart for her own good and she has that smirk and his eye lashes - and it all looks too familiar - and she wonders if he knows how close she probably is to being one hot football player away from ruining her future. She watches him with his mother, too, watches him count pills and peer at dosage instructions as he half listens to a story about a neighbor down the street with two wives and a three legged dog – or a three legged wife and two dogs – since the details blur together after a while.

She almost laughs, because her mother has those same kind of neighbors in the trailer park, and she wonders if maybe Iowa has the same problem with three legged dogs that Washington state does, and she watches him as he finally puts the pill bottles down on the table and just listens, and he's got that look: that he wants it to stop but he can't stop it, or won't stop it, or tried to stop it and failed, or was just too tired to try anymore.

They stay two days longer then they'd planned, five total, and she watches as he gives Amber money he doesn't really have, and leaves more meds for his mother with a new schedule taped firmly to the creaky refrigerator, and promises them both he'll visit again soon, and she wonders what soon means to a teenager whose alternately cold and clingy and a mother whose entire concept of time hinges on three white pills taken twice daily.

* * *

He tells Amber he wishes things could have been different, and he means it in more ways then he can count, even if he doesn't think any of it could have been, and he thinks she gets it and she promises she'll keep writing and she hugs him like she means it and like she's happy to see him and he promises he'll keep helping her as much as he can even though he knows she'll learn soon enough that he's never been much help to anyone.

He tells his mother he loves her – which is as true as it is impossible – since she's never been her, really, and the voices never go away completely and he never can trust what she's saying until he checks for himself, and she's always a few missed pills away from knifes and cops and ambulances. But he knows that love is just like that – that you never know what's coming or what you did wrong to set it off and it's always your fault and you can't be mad at crazy and you should always sleep behind locked bedroom doors anyway because sometimes love gets confused or takes a beige pill instead of a white one or forgets that you're not one of Them, whoever Them is that week.

He drives back most of the distance himself – over Izzie's protests – because he needs to see something other then corn even if it's just road - until she wrests the keys away from him at a road stop. It's just as well because everything blurs into the horizon when the road's so flat that vertical and horizontal run together, and it makes drivers bleary eyed after a while and then it's easy to make a wrong turn and hard to spot grain threshers.

She's squawking about that again an hour or two later – something about paying more attention to slow moving vehicles and pain meds not mixing with driving. But he'd stopped even half listening at least four farms ago, and he's not sure which of his crimes she's really mad about this time, and he hopes that at least Izzie knows the score now because he doesn't know why she's still here and he doesn't have it in him to ask her to go again.


	2. Chapter 2

She wakes much too early the first morning they're back and she watches dawn straggle into the room. He still looks like he's been run over by what she'd just learned to call a grain thresher and he's pale and exhausted and it's the trip and the dust and the cold or his ghost of a mother or his desperate sister or the brother off half a country away. But she still feels like his remains are beside her, snoring softly, while the rest of him died in an elevator and a conference room and a dingy white farm house with rickety steps.

Brushing her fingers lightly over his chest, she remembers with a grimace how his face darkened when she'd asked him about the bullet. She was sure he'd save it, because guys like him keep souvenirs like that, and guys like him flaunt their gnarly scars, and guys like him clamber back onto elevators just to prove they're fearless, and guys like him would live in supply closets, just to prove they were those guys.

Those guys wouldn't have dreams like his either, she thinks two weeks later, dreams he still denied having, and they wouldn't change their scrub tops behind closed doors, or chart and do pre-ops and post-ops and general rounds when they had offers to scrub in on cool surgeries. They wouldn't stare blankly from the gallery when they thought no one was watching, either, and they wouldn't sit on cold porch swings sneaking Tuna Delight treats to the neighbor's grumpy orange cat while willing blondes waited in their beds.

* * *

He fumbles briefly with the scalpel and curses under his breath as he catches Robbins' patient gaze, and he grips the handle harder then he should when she passes him the next blade herself, and he forces his hands to steady and it's like he still doesn't have enough blood to reach his numb fingers and they just won't bend smoothly and the sympathetic glances from the scrub nurses gnaw through him like acid.

He glances briefly up to the gallery and she's watching and smiling which makes matters worse and he's sure he hears whispers and feels stares and it's like he's inching closer to permanent residence in Wyatt's office if he doesn't stop fumbling with ten blades and avoiding elevators. Then it'll be all white pills three times a day and incantations from the talking shrinks and none of that ever did clear his mother's mind of the voices and the shadows and the fog that just never lifted.

He finishes his work and smirks when Robbins compliments him, again, and he charts and rounds and it's much better the next day, and the next, and the next, until it's not again and then it's back to square one. His shift ends at three the following Tuesday, and he changes and swings through the hospital and stops by the clinic and watches through a glass window as Izzie smiles and laughs with a patient and two young nurses.

All eyes are on her face and he watches the small group light up around her and he knows the feeling so well that it burns right through him. She'd beaten it for real, the cancer, and her scans were all clear and she'd gone off somewhere and gotten herself happy, happier then he'd ever seen her, happier without him, happy far away from here, and he reminded himself that that's what he'd wanted for her when he asked her to go away.

She turns just then, catches his eyes and she's smiling and walking toward him and his stomach flutters into his shoes and he'd sink into the ground if he could. But then her lips are on his and she's telling him how well he did and how proud she is and her arms are around him and whatever the hell it is that makes her Iz just bubbles over like uncorked champagne and she still smells like pink frosting and green apple shampoo when her soft curls sweep his face and he's vaguely buzzed by the time she's telling him about dinner and he imagines that if Joe was there he'd take his keys and call him a cab.

* * *

She returns to the clinic after watching his latest surgery, relieved that his procedure had gone so well, and that he hadn't seemed as nervous as he had the day of his first solo, an amputation, she remembered, performed moments after he'd announced abruptly that he saw a future with her, and that he loved her. She remembered his voice, and his trembling hands, and she wondered what he'd seen – since she'd never really asked - before her own future became measurable in days, maybe even hours, or minutes, or seconds.

Whatever he'd seen, she was sure it hadn't involved peads. Shaking her head with a smirk, she recalled when he was going to be a hot shot Plastic Surgeon in Beverly Hills, with a red Ferrari and, no doubt, a harem of surgically enhanced beauties. She wondered if any of that had still been part of the future he'd envisioned back then, before he started turning up for lunch with red lollypops in his lab coat and spit-up turnips on his shoes.

She hauled her late lunch outside, despite the chilly fall air, and idly watched the swarm of people crossing the bustling main street along the south side of the hospital. She'd had premonitions back then, too, at least, that's what her mother's Psychic Friends would call them, for $29.99 an hour plus tax: visions of tiny hands, and dark curly hair, and wide green eyes, images of carriages and doll houses.

She'd had visions, all right; she'd have it all: she'd be a surgeon, and a wife, and a mother; she'd be every thing she dreamed of, even things girls like her weren't supposed to be. Smirking, she crumpled up her empty lunch bag and tossed it in the trash bin.

That was an eternity ago, too, when she still wanted to be a surgeon, before she noticed that she didn't really care that she hadn't soloed, and that she preferred the clinic bustle, where they actually appreciated her, and where it wasn't a sin or a crime or a weakness to actually care about people, and where she wasn't always apologizing for who she was.

* * *

He was sitting bolt up-right again that night, and the vacant gaze still didn't scream even when he cut into her and her eyes didn't flinch and he still couldn't save her and there was so much blood and he couldn't stop it and it'd leave a vicious scar no matter what he did and he had no answers, anyway, and he never would, and it would take another few minutes of unsteady exhaling to slow his heart rate enough to clear his head.

He forces himself back down onto his pillow and he curses himself because he's sure she's awake again, and he feels her arms slide around him, again, and she's asking him the same questions, and he'll never have answers for her, either, not any she wants, and he just shrugs and pretends to drift off to sleep again and she's still there in the morning and her arms are still closed around him and he has to get out before she wakes up.

* * *

Meredith hands her the full set of house keys later that week, with a pointed request for her to take care of things – and she's sure that by things Mere also means him – and it's odd that Mere expects her to stay, since everyone else seems convinced she's already half gone again and even Bailey's pressing her for a real commitment to the clinic, and that was never part of the plan, at least, not before the plan got shot to hell.

It's a busy place to take care of, though, Mere's house, since it's overrun with spirits and she wonders idly if her mother's crazy friends from the trailer park would suggest a cleansing or a séance – or at least a Ouija board - and if they'd think she was making fun of them since she'd done that before, about other things she didn't understand at the time either, things even simpler then ghosts and premonitions - and possibly less tangible.

But the clinic had become her sanctuary instead of the house anyway, since it wasn't overrun with ghosts – living or dead – and she'd finally found a place for her talents and it reminded her that she didn't fight for her life just to settle for silence so she hunts him down at lunch and tells him that he's going back to Wyatt and that she's coming with him – and she's sure push will have to come to shove this time - and she expects chairs to scrape and lunch trays to clatter but she doesn't expect him to stalk away after informing her testily that he'd already been back to seeing Wyatt for three freaking weeks.

* * *

He keeps his next appointment, too, and Izzie will think it's because of her – or the dreams she shouldn't know about anyway – but really it's because he's fumbling through simple surgeries and its not like he does shrinks, period, ever, but the glint of the metal blades sometimes makes him flinch and elevators still make him nervous and he won't pop pills like a junkie just to sleep and it's not like surgeons can be freaking cowards.

He goes the following week too but still tells her nothing when he gets home. He grabs the dusty guitar from the corner of his room instead and forces his clumsy fingers across the strings and its circulation and its pain and its calluses and its his father telling him he'll never get any of it right and he'll try harder then, until his fingers bleed, because if his father's right the whole universe is wrong and he can't quite give up on the whole universe just yet because Amber just sent him another letter – in sparkle ink - and its full of teen age crap that almost makes him think she may turn out alright despite him.

Setting the guitar down nearly an hour later, he rinses his hands and changes his shirt, pulling on the grey high school wrestling tee she'd sent him. He'd laughed at her letter, explaining that she'd swapped tutoring some dumb jock for it, and that she though he'd like it because it was from their school, and that they still had some of his trophies in the glass case in the gym, but that a few of the teachers still remembered him and he'd probably get detention if he ever went back there so he should steer clear when he visits.

That's probably true, he imagines, and she tells him that she got almost all A's and that mom's taking the meds he sends right, and that Aaron's in Kansas – hauling drill bits along the yellow brick road – and he wonders why she writes notes when she's got his cell number, and if she ever thinks about what she wants to be someday, and if she'll still believe she can be something if she doesn't get out of there before it's too late.

He leans back on his bed, calculates the years until he'll be making anything like decent money, and just shakes his head with a smirk, since nothing in his life ever adds up. He snags the guitar again, strums a complicated cord he can't do from memory, forces his fingers across the strings again, each time in a different key, each time to a different beat.

It sounds awful, and feels all wrong, but finger control and speed is the goal. Everything at the hospital is moving faster since the merger, except him; everything since his visit home, everything since the shootings is moving faster, except him; everything with Izzie is moving faster, except him. He'll have to speed up, too, or he'll get left behind again.

* * *

She knows he's still going to his appointments but his dreams get worse rather then better and she wonders what Wyatt's doing with him, and if Wyatt even knows about her – apart from what she's gathered from the grapevine about the Cancer Chick – and if she thinks its all the abandoning wife's fault, and if he blames her for his stupid elevator phobia as if she had anything to do with that, and if it's all about her and not about the gunman who blew a hole in him or the guitar that he strums until he skins his fingers raw.

She wonders if he's even mentioned the little white farmhouse, too, or the mother whose still there but isn't, or the sister whose still there but longs to be anywhere else, or the father he beat off with his fists. She's sure he's related none of that, actually, because he's Alex and infuriating and it would be just like him to attribute whatever the hell his night mares are about to a mad gunman, when he'd been steeped in madness his whole life.

It bugs her, all of it, and she still prods him about elevators and drags him into supply rooms and pushes him to return phone calls to his sister, and she knows he wants space but she's sure that's the last thing he needs and she learned that from bitter experience herself - that space is just empty and cold and sometimes what you think you need most – what you think you can't live without – just makes living unbearable once you get it.

* * *

She's behind him three weeks later when the bathroom mirror abruptly defogs and he still flinches when she slides her hands across his chest and he eyes her warily, waiting for signs, and he knows its coming because it always does. Then he's trembling again when her skin ripples against his and her arms snake more tightly around him and his groans mingle with hers as she tugs him onto the fluffy bath mat she'd bought the week before.

He's sure she's waiting for something – the right job, the right opportunity - but then it's her fingers and her lips and her curves again and the beastly rumblings and the new rug that needs to be broken in. Then she's laughing over breakfast and her hair dries in golden waves and she slips her hand in his on their way into the building and she kisses his cheek and she's off to the clinic where the staff crowds around her and the patients adore her and she's racing ahead again, into another future that doesn't include him.

He still picks up more Halloween crap on his way home the next evening, though, Raisinet snack packs for the mangy beggars, and those stupid little candy corns for the cup cakes she's making for her staff, and the black felt she wanted for who the hell knows what, because she does holidays, and Mere's neighborhood swarms with kids, and he's not picking toilet paper out of the trees at three in the morning again this year.

It's freaking extortion no matter how you decorate it. But it's too late, anyway, since there's already a giant plastic spider plopped on Mere's porch swing when he gets home, and he just shrugs at the bewildered expression that meets him as Cheddar, the neighbor's crabby cat, swats suspiciously at the spider's wildly dangling legs, and Alex digs through his bags and offers up some Tuna treats and whispers that he doesn't get it, either.

* * *

She says another prayer and lights a candle and buys a Christmas decoration from the church fund raiser, though it's only October, and she picks the angel tree topper with the pale blue dress and the delicate silvery wings and wraps it carefully in tissue paper as she happily stashes it in her large purse, imagining what her tree will look like this year.

She pictures the angel often that day, since it has dark curly hair and green eyes and long eye lashes, almost like the baby she'd pictured the day they harvested her eggs, another dream frozen in limbo, like everything else she'd forgotten about the day she ran away.

He'd be a good father, she'd thought at the time, even back then, before he'd declared for peads. He wouldn't believe it until he was, and he'd be nervous and awkward and he'd fumble with braids and bicycles. But he wouldn't give up, and he wouldn't run away, and he'd never have the right words, but they'd know all they needed to, anyway. She'd even pictured it once, them dancing at their daughter's wedding.

It was absurd, really, because she was dying when she envisioned it, and she never really believed there'd be a green eyed, curly haired little girl for her to watch grow up. But that's what they always told her, the people in her chemo group, stay positive, picture the goods things, imagine a future with you in it. And she had, over and over, until it became almost more real then the chemicals dripping into her veins. She'd had premonitions of her death, and premonitions of her future, and her future had won, well, almost.

She returns to the church that evening, to offer another quick prayer on her way home, and while she's there she lights another candle. She barely remembers their religious significance from Sunday school, barely remembers much of anything beyond the dust to dust mantra. But they were in her premonitions, too, flickering candle lights, and she remembers strange stories about souls reborn from ashes, and fables about forgiveness.

Checking her watch, she notices that it would only be another ten minutes or so before the priest turned up to hear confessions. It was still too soon, though, because she'd cursed God plenty, too, along with just about everything and everybody in her path – her mother, her friends, her husband - and she wasn't exactly sure how to fix that, either.

* * *

He helps her distribute candy on Halloween and he sneaks the Tuna Delight treats that Izzie buys by the case - for reasons he can't fathom, though he just doesn't want to know if she uses them for baking - to the neighbor's grouchy cat, and there's taunting and teasing about Izzie's need for her witch's costume and whether his scars would really suit a pirate and it gets semi-kinky between door bell rings until a kid's toy gun startles him.

He recovers immediately and tosses the whole group some choice M&M snack packs but she sees it all and the damage is done and she's making demands again – about him going back to Wyatt and how she's coming with him too, for real, this time – and he's half sure it's all meant to provoke him, so that it's all his fault again and always will be – and she can just walk away again and never look back this time.

She goes with him to his next appointment anyway and its stony silence from him as she chatters about his dreams and the freaking toy gun and the elevator thing that she just won't drop - and what if he just doesn't need anything from the freaking supply closet - and then he's asserting that he's a better pirate then she is a witch – which really leaves Wyatt puzzled – and the session ends abruptly when Izzie demands to know when this is ever going to end, as if he has any freaking clue what the hell "this" is, anyway, as if this is even a word, really.

* * *

She goes to his appointments over the next few weeks, too, despite the grumbling, and she returns to church regularly and she buys another ornament, a drummer boy this time, and she listens to the sermons about peace and joy and she sees it all again - tiny hands and bright green eyes and long lashes peering back at her through flickering candle light, and she wonders sometimes if they're waiting for her to bring them home.

It was crazy, she told herself – almost like brain tumor crazy – to see bright green eyes peer back at her through delicate flames, and she could never say it out loud without sounding like one of her mother's psychic friends, the ones she used to make fun of, when they traced lifelines on trembling, upturned palms and read swirling tea leaves and seriously plotted entire futures through Tarot cards anyone could buy on E-bay.

It was all a scam – selling better living through prophecies spun from an eight dollar crystal ball. But she saw things, too, now, and she had more faith in miracles these days, since she was one, and she was starting to think that her premonitions were road signs, and it was all still crazy, but somewhat less so, since she'd already run her life into a ditch, anyway, and finding the right road back had proven elusive at best.

She returns to the house afterwards and tries to pick a fight, as usual – because it's not angels here, its demons, and it's not peace and joy, it's dead silence – and she wonders why he won't even fight back, or if he thinks they have nothing left to fight for, or if whatever fight he has left is reserved for the dreams that he still denies having.

* * *

He jolts awake again three mornings later, sometime around four a.m., and he drops back onto his pillow, relieved he was far enough away not to wake her this time, her and her questions. They're always different and always the same, these dream, and they start with her not screaming – though sometimes she's Reed and sometimes she's Amber and sometimes she's his mother and sometimes she's Mere and sometimes she's Iz – and they always end with him hurtling down a darkened elevator shaft before he can reach them.

It's black, jet black, and he always wakes clawing out of his own grave and he's no expert on normal but this can't be it, and maybe Wyatt can help with the elevators and the scalpels – something has to – but he's still not doing pills because then he's like his father and it would all be easier if Iz would just sleep in her old room because then she wouldn't know and there'd be fewer questions and she'd stop being so freaking worried in the middle of the night and she'd stop being so freaking angry the mornings after.

* * *

She still pokes and prods him about those dreams weeks later, and he still denies having them and even hints that maybe she's hearing things in her sleep and maybe Wyatt could do her some good and it all gets snarly and heated and uncomfortable. But she invites her mother down for Thanksgiving anyway, and she sends him to pick her up at the bus station while she bastes and guts a turkey and slides two apple pies into the oven.

She remembers too late that her mother really can't be trusted with guys like Alex, and she almost cringes when the door bursts open and Robbie sweeps inside. But then her arms are around her and Alex wanders in munching her cookies right out of a plastic baggie so she imagines he's fine no matter what else happened on their ride home.

They've met before and she expects things to be chilly because her mother is, well, Robbie, and she lied to him about where Izzie was and she carries back-up Tarot cards in her purse and quotes the National Enquirer like some people quote the Bible and she's a little too much… well, too much everything for most people – but mostly he just shrugs and smirks and watches football and Robbie bakes him more cookies and kisses him on the cheek when she leaves and whispers something to him that almost makes him smile.

Izzie drives her back to the bus stop herself the following day and she evades every question about her and Alex, and her and her job, and her and Mere's house, and her and the lover's card, and it spooks her beyond reason that Alex let her mother read his lifeline and agreed with her about the government concealing UFO's in New Mexico and raved about her cookies and shrugged and nodded when she invited herself back for Christmas.

Robbie really can't out-crazy his mother, though, and Izzie actually misses her as the bus pulls away and she's already planning for Christmas anyway. She swings by the mall just to get a taste of the holiday season and she buys two small gold charms and she people watches as she has them wrapped in delicate silver foil paper and a light dusting of snow covers her car as she drives home and another football game flickers in the darkened living room when she arrives.

It's barely five p.m. but he's plainly in the depths of a cookie coma so she stashes her packages in the kitchen and makes her tea and crawls onto the couch beside him, pulling a puffy down throw around them as she settles cautiously into him. It's still not quite as easy as it used to be, before she'd had to maneuver carefully around thick bandages and deep wounds, but the bandages are long gone while it still takes her a few seconds longer to slide her arms around him, before hesitantly drawing into his chest.

It was silly, she reminded herself, since the scars had mostly closed over, and for months she'd attributed his inability to sleep comfortably in her arms, like he used to, to the deep bruising along his side, which she was sure ached even after he'd stopped wincing, just like she'd attributed his reticence in the shower to thin towels and low blood counts, which must have made him chilly, and his shallow breathing to bruised lungs, judging from the wide purple blue swath that still wrapped around his torso.

It had to be about that, about bullets and crazed gun men and elevators and nightmares, because otherwise it would have something to do with her – his on going hesitance, his reluctance to melt into her hands the way he used to, or to laugh or to shiver or to moan when her hands roamed his skin more freely, or to dissolve into that deep sated purr that used to rumble through him after her beast had had its full of him, and she would curl around him like a contented lioness around her prey, drifting off peacefully.

It couldn't be her fault, though, or she'd never be able to answer her mother's questions – about why she was here and when she would tell him – questions that almost made her madder now, because she'd been an expert once - when she was fifteen - on her mother's choices and failures. She'd had all the answers back then, before Hannah, and Hank, and broken marriages galore.

But none of those answers would change the feel of his body, or the timber of his voice, or the warmth of his breath as he settled into her chest, or the steady beat of his heart under her fingers, or the strength of his arms as he tugged her closer in his sleep, or how much of her seemed to go missing when he wasn't curled around her, too, or how dark her premonitions seemed, when he wasn't there, or how much she missed him.

* * *

He stirs to the dull hum of a descending elevator, but there's no pitch darkness, just the ghostly flicker of the television, and there's no dead silence, just a steady heartbeat beneath his ear, and there's no icy piercing, just the soft rise and fall of her chest, and her arms tighten around him as he shifts gingerly, trying not to wake her.

Her murmur echoes through him as she burrows closer, and every curve fills every hollow like a puzzle with no pieces left over, and she still smells like cake frosting and green apple shampoo, and it's as dizzying as any tumble down an elevator shaft and its been months now and she's still in his arms and he's still braced for impact.

He almost curses, because he's holding his breath and still barely moving and she's dissolving over him, anyway, and she knows every inch of him even when he's fully dressed, or covered in scars, and he's like one of those freaking see through anatomical models in the Skills lab, like all his insides are visible outside, and it doesn't even matter since he's spilling into her hands either way and his whole body's conspiring with her.

He has no idea what their plan is, even, but he almost pulls away because he's drowsy and warm and the minute he dozes off her chest will drop away and then he'll be free falling again – through the night mare in the elevator or the dream where she's still in his arms – and then he'll wake as he always does, gasping for air or holding his breath.

It's all madness, anyway, because, she's nuzzling his neck and murmuring things in his ear that just can't be and any sane person would run at the first hint of beastly rumblings and sane people know that flickering light at the end of any dark tunnel is an on-coming train, and sane people know better then to keep making the same mistakes.

She shreds his sanity with his clothes, though, and he's falling again, slipping down off the couch, and madness courses through his veins as her silky skin wraps around him and any sane person would avoid this stretch of jungle and any sane person would refuse to moan the beast's name and any sane person would flee before she curled around him, digging her claws in deep to make another meal of his remains.

That's what sane people would do, but she doesn't go back to her old bedroom, and she doesn't prowl off afterwards, she pushes harder and he pulls back further because he's sure she'll leave him if he fights back, and she'll leave him if he doesn't, and she'll leave him even if he could just stop being the guy who flinches at elevators, and she'll leave because he'll still have scars he can't hide – and he wonders if the shots you don't see coming are easier – though that may be the coward talking, too.

She's there in his next session, though, and complaining about his unspoken dreams again, and it just doesn't matter, and he finally asks her bluntly how he's supposed to tell anyone about his dreams of digging his way out of his own grave without them thinking he's crazy - and she knows about his mother and Wyatt knows about the elevators and they'll put it all together and then he'll be like his mother – which is possibly worse then ending up like his father, since at least he knew why you were beating the crap out of him – and it wasn't like Izzie was trapped in some freaking farm house with him, anyway, and it wasn't like he was some freaking invalid, and it wasn't like he needed a sitter.

* * *

Silence echoes through the room after that, and Wyatt's pen scratches furiously across her yellow note pad and Izzie's stomach plunges into her shoes and she grabs his hand and pulls harder then she intends to and catches his eyes - startled and bewildered and terrified - and his face reddens as she forces it back to hers when he tries to look away.

It's what she gets for pushing so hard, she imagines frantically, and she just blurts out that her full time job at the clinic starts in January, and that she never actually signed the final divorce papers he'd sent back to her the day before the shootings – so, technically, they're still sort of married - and she still has her toy ring and his pirate costume needs work and she hates his guitar playing – because, really, what the hell kind of music is that, anyway - and he sneaks the neighbor's grumpy orange cat too many Tuna treats.

It all comes out in a jumble and she notices briefly that Wyatt looks about ready to drown herself in her aquarium, and Alex is turning ten shades of red and probably fuming, and she wonders in a panic if her church offers a 911 confession hot-line, and she'd swear later that it was all instinct as she grabbed her purse and fled for her life while Wyatt's angel fish gazed on serenely and she rapidly scribbled more notes in his file.

She returns from church later that evening and he eyes her warily and she says nothing about the straggly little fir tree now standing awkwardly in the living room, though it's still four weeks until Christmas, and she breezes into the kitchen and pounds and chops and rolls and shoves a batch of sugar cookie bells and stars and snowmen into the oven and she pulls squashed boxes of red and green decorations and a plastic manger scene from the over stuffed closet in the den.

She notices him eying her hesitantly as she surveys the tree, fluffing out its branches and hanging felt reindeer and placing her new angel carefully on top. So she presses a big package of tinsel into his hands and he shuffles his feet while she adds twinkling lights and fat candy canes and she swats him playfully when he mutters something about a case of tin foil exploding and she's laughing when she hangs the final decoration, and she turns the little drummer boy's face away from them, before peeling off Alex's clothes.

"I didn't sign the final papers," she reminds him quietly, nearly an hour later, stroking him gently and picking stray tinsel from his shoulder, as he carefully untangles and errant plastic manger sheep from her hair.

"Yeah," he mumbled, his voice wavering as his breath still returned.

"I was mad at you for taking so long to send them back," she said, tracing her fingers lightly down his side and lingering along the curve of his hip.

"I heard," he muttered bitterly, "from Mere."

"That wasn't fair," she agreed wryly. "I should have yelled at you directly."

"Right," he snorted, averting his eyes.

"You told me to leave," she retorted sharply.

"Not the first time," he snapped. "You didn't even give me a chance. You just… I was trying to help you. How could you think-"

"I wasn't," she interrupted hurriedly. "Thinking, I just, it all happened so fast."

"I came back again," she added softly, after an awkward silence, her warm hand re-settling tentatively just beneath his rib cage.

"Would you have, if I hadn't…" he trailed off uncomfortably, watching her eyes and her fingers as she stroked delicately along his torso.

"Don't think I'm crazy," she said, almost cringing because she was sure that's exactly what he'd think before she even got all the words out. "But I knew about it before anyone even called…"she hesitated, trying not to sound like her mother as she almost motioned toward the scar lines raking his body. "Well…"she continued, shaking her head wryly at his puzzled expression. "I just knew I had to come back."

Her fingers came to a stop again, resting in a familiar spot, and she couldn't quite see his eyes, but she could feel his heart beating steadily, could feel the rush or air into his lungs, and the contraction of muscle against bone as his ribs rose and fell, and the warm flow of blood through his veins, and the rippling pulse of his nerves as his flesh quivered slightly beneath her touch, as a deep moan simmered just below the surface of his skin.

"I think I'm supposed to be here. Does that sound crazy?" she asked softly, studying him closely.

"You didn't think that before," he muttered, still not quite looking at her.

"But I do now," she insisted. "We could start over."

"It's not getting better, this thing with Wyatt," he mumbled, his voice ragged, his gaze following the path of her warm hands again, as they curled softly beneath his ribs.

"It will," she asserted. "It's only been six months."

"But what if it takes-" he protested, frowning seriously.

"Then we'll deal with it," she interrupted fiercely, cutting him off.

"We will?" he echoed, hesitantly emphasizing the "we."

"I bought Amber a Christmas present already," she blurted out suddenly.

"We never really do holidays," he replied reluctantly, his puzzled frown indicating that she'd probably turned without signaling again.

"It's a little gold charm," Izzie added. "It's just something to let her know we were thinking about her." She watches as least eleven distinct moods scrawl across his face just then, and she's sure he doesn't realize that he's always either all in or all out, and he's all in with Amber even if he won't notice that for another few years at least.

"She likes shiny stuff," he agrees, nodding after a long silence, and she imagines that he's basing that assessment entirely on the glittery card she'd spied in the bulky envelop that his tee shirt came in, and that that's probably everything he knows about teen aged girls.

"We could invite her here, sometime," Izzie continued. "Let her see what her big brother does in the big city. Let her be proud of you."

"Right," he smirked, lowering his eyes again.

"Robbins raves about you, you know," she added, pulling him closer. "So does Bailey. You're… you're a good doctor."

"So," he stammered, his face reddening again. "We can like, start over?"

"You never really proposed, you know," she added pointedly, lightly kissing his neck.

"No time," he shrugged sheepishly.

"Or guts," she taunted, brushing her fingers along an especially ticklish spot she'd re-discovered recently. "And you ate the gum ball that came with my wedding ring."

"You hate grape," he protested, squirming slightly. "And you were still hurling up everything back then, anyway. Why waste a perfectly good $0.75 cent gum ball?"

"We could start from the beginning," she said, tugging him closer, and almost giggling as she resisted the impulse to point out that his makeshift budget had apparently expanded to include line items for Tuna Delight cat treats and red lollypops and a spindly, homeless Christmas tree that no sane person would have blown more then a nickel on.

"You know, do it right," she added, her hands sliding gently around his ribs again, rising and falling in another familiar rhythm as his breathing slowed beneath them.

"I returned the tux already," he noted, peeking suspiciously down at her hands again despite the muffled sigh that escaped him.

"We're still married," she reminded him, rolling her eyes. "I like you better like this anyway," she teased, tracing her fingers along his bare body again, and frowning when he shifted slightly, as her hands passed over his side.

"It's hot," she teased, brushing her hand lightly over the fading purple blue swath still surrounding his surgical scars. "It makes you look like Barney."

"I've spent months in peads," he snorted, sighing softly again as she continued her explorations, "never been mistaken for Barney."

"Maybe a pirate, then," she agreed, studying his skin more seriously. "We can work on your costume for next year," she added.

"Witches are into pirates?" he smirked, his own fingers making her shiver, as they trailed lazily over her collar bone.

"And purple dinosaurs," she agreed, nodding seriously and curling into him with a contented murmur.

"It's not going away," he repeated quietly, his hand settling over hers. "I'm trying, but… it's just not going away."

"Neither am I," she whispered, burrowing closely into his arms.


End file.
